Month: November 1982

Dating, Mandating & Catering To Scale At Keele, Mid To Late November 1982

Keele Students’ Union With Thanks To Paul Browning For The Photo

My November 1982 diary continues mostly to document a set pattern of student life that term. I was going out with Liza O’Connor, whom, it seems, I would see two or three times each week. At that time she was still living with her family at The Sneyd Arms, so I quite often describe walking her home late at night; which presumably staved off the wrath of Geoff O’Connor – no student (or offspring) wanted his wrath.

Photo by Glyn Baker: The Village & Sneyd Arms – a peaceful place (as long as landlord Geoff was not wrathful)

There are three noteworthy events in the diary for that mid to late November period:

  • getting Keele Action Group (KAG)’s long-planned mandate for an occupation through the UGM;
  • planning and holding a Jewish Society Friday Night meal;
  • a rather peculiar diary entry for the Saturday after that meal, which suggests, between the lines, some consternation.

Keele Action Group’s Long-Planned Mandate For An Occupation, 15 November 1982

I explained the background to KAG’s UGM mandate for a student occupation in a couple of earlier pieces – click here or below for the first of them:

Keele Action Group Springs Forth Campus-Wide, Constitutional Matters Mingle With A Crucial Culinary Debate In My Barnes L54 Flat, 8 to 11 October 1982

…here or below for the second of them:

Culture & Action At Keele, Late October 1982

In the end, it was me who proposed the motion – much to the chagrin of Union President Truda Smith, who afterwards gave me a metaphorical handbagging…or do I mean “metaphorical hairdryer treatment“…or do I mean a metaphorical “handbagging with hair-dryer within” treatment? Truda was not happy. Pete Roberts seconded the motion, which probably gave the motion the political gravitas we thought it needed, as he was the immediate past Education & Welfare sabbatical and he said that he thought the quality of our education and our welfare was at risk from the cuts.

The diary entry suggests that the result was a solid win on the vote:

Monday 15 November 1982: Busy day – writing speech etc. UGM went well – motion passed well etc. Paul & Mike came in after.

I’m not sure who Paul & Mike were in this context. Was it you, Paul Evans? I don’t remember you being into the politics much but perhaps the issue of the cuts floated your boat. For Mike, a bearded fellow in a duffel coat springs to mind but I don’t honestly remember for sure. Pete Roberts, Simon Jacobs or Jon Gorvett might help me out here. Or perhaps not.

J-Soc Friday Night Meal, Friday 26 November 1982

Whose blithering idea was it to attempt this at Keele – a University with a tiny, mostly secular Jewish community?

Actually I have a funny feeling it was sort-of my idea.

Following the success of the International Fair the previous summer and the “joint venture” I had fostered with Tony Wong of the Chinese Cultural Society, I was very cognisant of the fact that other cultural societies had centred their cultural offerings around food, whereas J-Soc had not really done so.

Further, we had some enthusiasts for doing a meal in the form of, if I remember correctly, Michelle Epstein (who was in her second year) plus a couple of newbies – Annalisa de Mercur (who became a good friend for many years, during and after Keele) plus Julie Reichman.

In short, I think it was my idea that we do food and “the girls” turned the idea into something with deeper cultural significance – a heimisch Jewish Friday Night meal.

Photo by Olaf.herfurth, CC BY-SA 3.0 – our event wouldn’t have looked quite as authentic as this…

…our event wouldn’t have looked or sounded anything like the vid below either:

My recollection is that the event “got big on us”, with a lot of work in the planning and the aftermath. The event dominates my diary from the Tuesday before until the day itself and even seemed to dominate until the Monday after.

I don’t even remember where we held the dinner, although something tells me that there was a facility in Horwood that we could and did use for events like this. Or, if not, possibly the Lindsay Hexagon.

I remember being delighted to leave much of the hands-on running of the event to “the girls” and feeling, by the end of it, that I was happy to leave J-Soc more generally in their very capable (and more enthusiastic than my) hands.

The attendees for the event included several people from the Chinese and Arab cultural societies, plus my own entourage (including Liza O’Connor & my new flatmate Alan Gorman, who came from Catholic backgrounds), which might have been fascinating and/or beguiling for them.

“Hastly” Day After The Big Event, Saturday 27 November 1982

Hastly [by which I think I meant “hassle-strewn”] day. Shopped in afternoon – Liza and Chantelle’s friend stayed for dinner. Went to union – got quite drunk…took L home quite late

The fact that I mention Chantelle’s friend in this context means, I’m pretty sure, that there must have been some sub-text. I don’t really remember, but I suspect that I was pretty “duncatering” by the Saturday and/but ended up preparing the Saturday dinner in question. “Got quite drunk” was probably a way to let off steam in the union after the catering stresses of the preceding few days.

The subtext is probably lost in the mists of time, but if I had a grump on in those days, people around me would have known about it. Actually I’m not sure the obviousness of my grump has changed much in the forty years since.

On the Monday I was “sorting out J-Soc stuff still” which probably irritated me, although I did find time in the afternoon to “visit Anju”.

But it is mostly work for the next few days, so I sense that I felt that I was behind where I wanted to be with my essays and the like. Either that or some sort of interpersonal grump that I was too polite to write down and which is now, mercifully, long-since forgotten.

Busy With A Lexicon Of Learning At Keele Plus ABC At Hanley, 4 to 12 November 1982

ABC depicted in Leicester a day or two before we saw them in Hanley

It seems I had gone into busy mode quite early in that first term of my P2 year (third year at Keele but second degree year):

I explained most of the scribbled terms such as KAG (Keele Action Group) in the preceding “forty years on” pieces, such as this one, click here or below:

Culture & Action At Keele, Late October 1982

The “work busy” stuff would have mostly comprised getting my head around:

  • Development Economics with Peter Lawrence (still an Emeritus Professor at Keele forty years on):
  • Jurisprudence with Philip Rose;
  • Criminology with Pat Carlen (still a doyen of Criminology forty years on) & Mike Collinson (sadly no longer with us).

If anyone out there can decipher the “[something?] plan” on the Sunday, which was conjoined with the KAG I’d love to know. We were proposing an occupation so I have a vague feeling that the plan was to do with advanced planning for that. We (perhaps naively) assumed that, once mandated to carry out an occupation, the Union Committee might swing into action quickly. Oh, the innocence and optimism of youth.

A couple of evenings with girlfriend Lisa during that time, ahead off a big night out to see ABC, who were “that years’s thing” in 1982.

I’m pretty sure we went to Victoria Hall in Hanley for the concert, on the evening that the following review appeared in the Leicester Mercury – presumably the De Montfort Hall gig had been on the Wednesday but this was the very tour/show we saw.

ABC Leicester Mercury ABC Leicester Mercury 12 Nov 1982, Fri Leicester Mercury (Leicester, Leicestershire, England) Newspapers.com

I remember a lot of excitement ahead of the gig and I remember that lots of us from Keele were there. For sure I was there with Lisa and I’m pretty sure Simon Jacobs and Jon Gorvett – they can confirm or deny. I have a feeling that Ashley Fletcher wasn’t there that night, but I could be wrong. I also have a feeling that Alan Gorman didn’t fancy that gig, which was a bit pricey and also (as some might say) a bit arty-farty for some tastes.

Mary Haddon in The guardian described that show as “sophisticated, not “arty-farty” – see below.

ABC HARRON GUARDIANABC HARRON GUARDIAN 19 Nov 1982, Fri The Guardian (London, Greater London, England) Newspapers.com

If you are too young to have seen or heard ABC at that time, here are some performance vids to help your eyes and ears adjust. Quintessentially early 1980s, they were, ABC, but then it WAS the early 1980s:

They did some proper filmic vids too – seriously arty-farty they were, especially this one – but I do recall this particular number going down especially well live at the gig:

Five Go Mad In Barnes, Keele, Early November 1982

Schubert The Sheep, emulating Timmy The Dog

I have one very clear memory from the first few days of November 1982, about which the diary is entirely silent, plus one discovery on that diary page which baffles me as I really cannot remember the occasion at all.

2 November 1982 – The Launch Of Channel 4

Television played a minuscule part in my life at Keele, until the arrival of Alan Gorman in Barnes L54 equipped with a snazzy “starting University present” from his parents – a portable black and white television set and a licence to use it.

My first recollection of watching that television with Alan was the launch of Channel 4, an event that had been talked about in the news media with great fanfare.

I know that said fanfare had reached my parents, as I remember my mother once telling me that she had been watching Countdown since the day it was the very first broadcast on that new channel. I can imagine my dad having meticulously tuned the family television set to a Channel 4 Test Card days or even weeks before the big day.

My diary is silent on this matter, but I remember one aspect of that event very well.

We, by which I mean Barnes L54, gathered to watch Five Go Mad In Dorset that evening. That Comic Strip film had been trailed at length as a centrepiece of Channel 4 launch day.

The arrival of Channel 4 actually presented a problem to the Students’ Union, which had an extension with several rooms, only three of which were designated television rooms. In a world with only three television stations, this worked rather well, but the addition of a fourth TV channel was the subject of much debate. Should The Quiet Room be converted into a fourth TV room (no). In which case, what method should be used to select which of the four channels would be viewed in which of the three TV rooms? I’m not sure how that was resolved, but I suspect that Five Go Mad In Dorset would have been watched in at least one of the TV rooms that night.

Here is a link to a YouTube of the film. Trigger warning: it is rich in parody of non-woke opinions such that it couldn’t possibly be made without major script revisions today…or a special “licence to offend” from the current Home Secretary, (November 2022) that would no doubt be granted.

It felt very different from the TV comedy I had watched with my parents and I suppose it felt like comedy for our generation…not least because we were laughing at the mores of our parents generation.

In particular I remember Alan and I laughing so much at this film that evening. One other thing I recall well was having to explain rather a lot of the jokes/cultural references to Hamzah, who was from Brunei. Once we explained a joke, Hamzah would laugh, but it was not the same laugh as his natural laugh at universal gags; gags that he understood straight away. His laugh at explained jokes was that slightly forced laughter that one tends to hear at performances of Shakespeare or Greek comedies.

We watched several of those Comic Strip films over the coming months on the days they were first broadcast in an “appointment to view” style, which I’m sure is just what Channel 4 was after with people like us.

3 November 1982 “Repaired Furniture”

US Embassy Sweden, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

I’m struggling to recall an evening repairing furniture. Frankly I’m struggling to recall the furniture to which I might possibly have been referring.

I have a feeling that Ahmed (who didn’t make it as far as ’82/’83 in the end) and I inherited some furniture from Jo and Margaret at the end of the previous academic year, when we resided with them (in my case briefly) in Barnes M65.

I vaguely remember a sort-of two seat sofa of non-descript look and vintage. Perhaps also a chair. I suspect that the furniture was not in the best of repair, so presumably we made a collective decision, as a flat, to repair it.

Now I have to be brutally honest here, especially in the absence of any memory of the evening in which I, according to my diary, “repaired furniture”. It is extremely unlikely that I made any positive, physical contribution towards the repairs.

At Alleyn’s School, handicraft was far and away my worst subject. Mr Evans, whom I recall trying (without success) to provide me with some patient, kindly tuition, gave up on me very early in my first year of secondary school. Actually I believe he gave up on all of us – I think he had some sort of a breakdown, no doubt triggered by his inability to transfer even a modicum of woodwork technique to one keen but relentlessly ten-thumbed new boy. That left me at the mercy of Mr Midgely, whose teaching method, especially when directed at less able boys, primarily involved ear-pulling and back-of-head -clipping.

No.

“Repaired furniture” can only possibly mean that the others – Alan in the main, I’d guess – repaired the furniture, while I directed operations and probably, helpfully, made the tea (aka dinner), something I was pretty good at doing. “Lashings of ginger beer” will not have been involved, but Alan and I might have downed some cans of cheap supermarket pale ale, which, in those days, could still be procured for as little as 26p a can if you were lucky. That I do remember.

RanjithSiji, CC BY-SA 3.0

Oh gosh, that is an improvement. Well done everyone.